Ensuring the ongoing engagement of second-stage teachers

Research and policy have increasingly focused on the importance of staffing schools with effective teachers. A critical variable affecting teacher effectiveness is the enthusiasm, energy and effort teachers bring to their work, or teachers’ work engagement. Better understanding teachers’ work engagement and how it may change over stages in a teacher’s career is the subject of this exploratory interview study of second-stage teachers—teachers with 4–10 years of experience. Participants in this study described engaging in their work to different degrees and in very different ways. As beginning teachers, their interest in and enthusiasm for teaching was typically high and they focused a great deal of energy on conducting their classes. However, over time they acquired a sense of competence and had been granted considerable professional autonomy. Although competence and autonomy inspired and energized some of these teachers, it also made it unnecessary to be highly engaged. Their administrators reportedly paid little attention to their choices and did not intervene. Ultimately, the decision about whether and how to engage in teaching was theirs to make. Although all participants reported a continued interest in and enthusiasm for teaching, three stage-related patterns emerged in how they engaged in their work. Some teachers chose to modify their engagement, re-directing a portion of their effort to activities other than teaching, including their families or coursework for recertification. Others decided to focus their engagement, by attending to more fine-grained, interesting aspects of their subject or pedagogy, now that they had the basics under control. Still others chose to diversify their engagement—engaging in new and interesting extensions of teaching, such as leadership roles and extracurricular activities. A few, whose efforts to improve their practice or contribute to their school had been ignored or discouraged, either said they would leave teaching or had disengaged as an alternative to leaving. These findings suggest that having a better understanding of teachers’ engagement and the role that the school plays in their decisions about how to engage is important for promoting effectiveness and retention among teachers who have moved beyond their novice years.     

Mathematics teachers’ learning: a conceptual framework and synthesis of research

How do practicing mathematics teachers continue to develop the knowledge and habits of mind that enable them to teach well and to improve their teaching over time? The question of how (and what) teachers learn lies at the crux of any effort to provide high-quality mathematics teaching for all students. This article reviews 106 articles written between 1985 and 2008 related to the professional learning of practicing teachers of mathematics. We offer a synthesis of this research, guided by Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (Teach Teach Educ 18(8):947–967, 2002) dynamic model of teacher growth. Their model emphasizes the recursive nature of teachers’ learning and suggests that growth in one aspect of teachers’ knowledge and practice may promote subsequent growth in other areas. We report the results in six major areas of teacher learning, identify several crosscutting themes in the literature, and make recommendations for future research aimed at understanding teachers’ professional learning.     

Mind the gap: privileging epistemic access to knowledge in the transition from Leaving Certificate music to higher education

In recent years, music at Leaving Certificate level has come under increasing focus in media and higher education discourse as an easy option. In particular, scant attention has been paid to the musical knowledge and skills needed in the transition to higher music education within the Irish context. This paper addresses the perceived gap in knowledge through an examination of documents and student and lecturer experiences in higher music education. Findings reveal that students who have access to private music tuition because of their greater cultural, social and economic capital have a distinct advantage in higher education over those who have relied on the state for music education. Moreover, there would appear to be a shift in emphasis from practical to theoretical knowledge in the transition to higher education. More critically, the paper argues for a reappraisal of curriculum and knowledge at both levels in light of the implicit privileging of epistemic access to ‘powerful’ knowledge in private music education.     

A phenomenology of learning large: the tutorial sphere of xMOOC video lectures

The current discourse surrounding Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is powerful. Despite their rapid and widespread deployment, research has yet to confirm or refute some of the bold claims rationalizing the popularity and efficacy of these large-scale virtual learning environments. Also, MOOCs’ reputed disruptive, game-changing potential for education remains unsubstantiated. A sober counterbalance is needed, in particular, via attending to students’ everyday accounts of the complex realities of learning in these massive online courses. This article reports on an exploratory, phenomenological study of the xMOOC learning experience. Our interest was not the xMOOC experience of students in general, but in its singular, lived particularities. What we discovered was a unique and intimate tutorial sphere that seemed to develop for some xMOOC students in the context of the video lectures, an experience sometimes marked by a sense of fandom surround.     

“I Don't Have Time to Dig Back Through This”: The Role of Semantic Search in Supporting Physician Information Seeking in an Electronic Health Record

The purpose of the study was twofold: to understand how usability affected physicians' performance as they used an electronic health record (EHR) and to ascertain whether use of a semantic search feature would better support physician performance during an information‐seeking task. Participants (n = 10) were asked to complete two search tasks to find pertinent patient information. In the first task, participants located the information as they normally would (through browsing the EHR). In the second task, participants employed a semantic search tool. Upon task completion, participants were interviewed to further understand their perceptions and information‐seeking behavior in an EHR. Statistically significant results confirmed that participants were able to more efficiently navigate through an EHR in terms of time and number of clicks when using the semantic search feature. Moreover, participants were more confident in the accuracy of their answers when using semantic search compared with the browsing method. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills?

Ninety-four Mainland Chinese children in the second and third years of kindergarten (mean age = 65 months, SD = 6.94) were tested on Pinyin letter-name knowledge, invented Pinyin spelling, general copying skills of unfamiliar print (in Korean, Hebrew and Vietnamese, ultimately combined to create a pure copying factor), delayed copying of characters, nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary knowledge, speeded number-naming, syllable deletion, and morphological awareness in order to examine unique correlates of beginning Chinese word reading and writing, which were also tested. With age, kindergarten level, and nonverbal reasoning statistically controlled, morphological awareness, speeded naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge uniquely explained Chinese word reading, whereas both the pure copying factor and delayed copying independently explained 11 and 5 % variance in Chinese word writing, respectively. Findings suggest a somewhat independent trajectory of developing word reading and writing skills in very young Chinese children and highlight the potential importance of both print-dependent and print-independent copying skills for the development of early word writing skill in Chinese.     

The World Of Music

R. Murray Schafer's The Tuning of the World (New York: Knopf, 1977—$12.95)

Garry E. Clarke's Essays on American Music (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977—$16.95)

Walter Herdeg, ed. Graphis/Record Covers (New York: Hastings House, 1974—$21.50)

Northrop Moore's A Matter of Records (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1977—$10.95)

Thomas Busby's A Grammar of Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976—$25.00)

Thomas Busby's A Musical Manual or Technical Directory (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976—$17.50)     

A Comparison of Four Types of Spelling Tests for Diagnostic Purposes

Data from 484 students out of a Hawaiian high school graduating class of 643 were used in a study of post-high school destinations. of these 643 students, 360 were found to have selected academic destinations. They were going either to universities, a regional 2-year branch of the state university, 4-year colleges, junior colleges, or technical schools. A factor analysis of ten variables consisting of teachers’ ratings of school related behavior, verbal (V) and quantitative (Q) School and College Abilities Tests (SCAT) scores, and rank in graduating class (R) revealed two factors: “g” a general intellective factor (SCAT Q and V) and school skills (teachers’ ratings and R). In general the institutions of high academic quality attracted students who were significantly higher on the variables of both factors. Variation from this pattern of choice was discussed in terms of ego self-direction and social control as it affected mobility away from the island location.